Why every bass player needs a good woman!!!

I'm on a project for work which takes me to Houston 2 weeks every month since last August until the end of April this year. While I'm in Houston, I visit the Guitar Center near my hotel and fall in love with an Ibenez SR506MB, and in one of my nightly SKYPE sessions with my wife, I tell her about it.

Trying to get home this week after my stint in Houston; Toronto and everywhere else gets smacked with a huge storm so my flight is canceled; from Thursday to Saturday, every flight I get redirected to or booked on gets canceled. Finally I get put on a standby which gets me home last night at 7pm.

Thrilled to see my wife and kids, I sit down to watch the hockey game with the family, and the wife says before you do that, we have an issue with the window in the music room downstairs. I go down to look and see what the issue is and find the Ibenez on a stand in the middle of the room. Needless to say I gave her a big hug and a kiss.

I will stick to the standard no pics no bass rule of TB and will post my review if you will after a some play time, but it already feels sweet.

And P.S. this is why every bass player needs a good woman in his life!!!

I can't count the number of times that Mrs Zoomie has helped me, supported me, and otherwise loved me for loving music.

I used to travel a fair bit and you gave me some ugly flashbacks. Working 6-7 16 hour days. FInally flying home. All you want to do is climb in to your fat boy shorts sitting in your favorite chair channel surfing and then BAM..........flight delayed or cancelled. It just crushes all the hope out of you.

Appearance:
I love the look of wood, so the Mahogany shaped body with Jatoba/Bubinga neck, and black chrome hardware looks downright sexy. The finish is done well, with only some very minor; and I do mean minor finish tell tale blemishes of a mass produced bass.

Setup:
The factory setup is not bad, and I think as time goes on I will adjust, but out of the box the intonation, string heigh truss rods (it has 2) is ok. Fretwork is even with no high or low frets, and found no dead spots, or buzzing anywhere on the neck. A very fast neck. Because of the neck size there is some dive on the bass, but nothing a good strap did not fix. It comes with Elixir strings. I've never played these, but they feel alright. 19mm string spacing. Plastic looking nut.

Electronics:
It comes with a set of Bartolini MK1-6 neck and bridge pickups with Bartolini 3 band EQ. Volume, Balance, Bass Boost/Cut, Mid Boost/Cut, Treble Boost/Cut, and a 250Hz 600Hz switch.
I set my Amp flat and worked the EQ itself to shape the sound. I was very impressed on how well they react, you could almost competely leave the amp flat.
The Bass Boost/Cut I found to be very responsive needing only slight adjustment to really get beefy tone from. Like this alot.
The Pickups are nice and quite with no hum noticed.
The electronics compartment at the back needed the use of Jewelers screwdriver to carefully pry open as the cover has a tight fit; but once onpened the workmanship is quite nice. Good soldering and wire managment, very clean look and well insulated.
The 9v battery compartment is easy to use, but to remove the clip the first time and test the supplied battery I needed to use a Jewelers screw driver as it was very tight on the battery terminals and it is not a heavy duty clip. I may change this at some point.

Hardware:
As stated the Black Chrome is sexy looking.
Accu-cast B306 bridge looks very adjustable, and they do supply allen wrenchs for both this and the truss rods.
Truss rod plate comes off very easy without having to loosen the strings, and rod adjusments are easy to get too.
Tuners all move well, nice and tight, with no sloppy movment on them or sticking.

Overall, I'm really loving this bass and would recommend it. I read a few reviews online and it typically scores 4.5 out of 5, and this is what I would give it too.
Great tone, and playability...

Couldn't agree more though - my own better half has just sat patiently in a music shop with me while I wrestled with the temptation to buy the most delightful MIA Precision. (Even she thought it was a beautiful instrument!) And after I reluctantly put it back on the shelf, bless her, she even listened as I tried to convince myself that we didn't have space in the flat...and that saving up for a T-bird might be a better investment given the band I'm playing with currently!